Re: wait....... what?
Hey, go fuck yourself, not everyone in Florida is stupid, just you and your family.
You may have just proven his point..
Oooooklahoma! Where the cops can stop and empty your bank cards – on just a hunch
Police in Oklahoma are deploying an electronic scanner that can drain currency from prepaid credit cards seized at the roadside using civil asset forfeiture laws. The Electronic Recovery and Access to Data (ERAD) handheld scanner was developed at the request of the Department of Homeland Security for use by US border guards. …
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Thursday 9th June 2016 05:51 GMT Public Citizen
Re: wait....... what?
Because, as has been demonstrated in an ever increasing number of [corrupt] jurisdictions this is an even easier scam to abuse than speed traps, with greater potential for "acquiring" [read outright steal] off budget funds that can be used to buy even more tactical toys that make it even easier to shake down the public.
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Thursday 9th June 2016 08:49 GMT SolidSquid
Re: wait....... what?
It doesn't go into escrow because you don't get it back unless you take the cops to court and prove that the funds aren't the result of criminal acts. They don't need to take you to court, they just have to have a "suspicion" it was obtained through criminal acts. It's a bizarre idea, given it's essentially pre-trial punishment without even *needing* a trial, but that's what they consider reasonable search and seizure apparently
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Thursday 9th June 2016 18:06 GMT fidodogbreath
Re: wait....... what?
If you live in the USA, and have posted/ read this comment, you should make sure you and everyone you know is able to vote and does. The systemic voter failure is the biggest issue right now. IMHO.
The real "voter failure" is that so many people put race, tribal identity, and so-called social issues ahead of common sense when they vote.
In the South, as long as a politician hates gays, abortion, racial minorities, and Democrats, s/he will be elected and re-elected. White Southern voters ignore everything else that their elected officials do; the only qualification is that they hate the same people and things.
As long as social and ethnic minorities are the main targets of third-world policies like civil asset forfeiture, the voters have no problem with it. When straight white Christians get their assets seized -- e.g., the Christian rock band whose merch money was taken -- only then do these policies become an "overreach."
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Thursday 9th June 2016 13:56 GMT Triggerfish
Re: wait....... what? @Sgt Oddball
Well if you follow that John Oliver link it talks about how Texas police paid for a Margarita Slushy machine with seized assets, Columbia police think of it as pennies from heaven which they can use to buy new non essential toys, and another place but a 50K Zamboni although they do not know why or where it is.
Can't do that if the accounts are frozen.Plus I guess if you take all of someones money and disappear it, maybe it's harder to fight it.
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Thursday 9th June 2016 18:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: wait....... what?
How did that ever get made legal? Why isn't there more oversight on something that is pretty much guaranteed to be abused on some level or another?
Indeed. In the old days, you'd take the plastic credit card and hold on to that - would have the same effect as freezing an account.
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Friday 10th June 2016 05:59 GMT tom dial
Re: wait....... what?
"[H]ow removing funds is better than just freezing accounts"
A bank is quite unlikely to freeze an account without a proper court order to do so and possibly concurrence of their internal legal office. Lots more paperwork, and much lower success probability than simple confiscation. And the skimmer is useful too, because the card contents don't become available automatically as does seized cash.
The immediate seizure process is so obviously in conflict with the fourth, fifth, and occasionally sixth amendments that it seems incomprehensible that it was not suppressed shortly after enactment.
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Wednesday 8th June 2016 20:17 GMT hellwig
I've heard of instances where there was no record of the assets being seized, meaning even when the family who had their money STOLEN from them went to the courts, the police had no record they ever even seized said profits, so it was their word (worthless) against the word of the cop who took the money in the first place.
Since no Government recognizes Bitcoin as currency, can they force you to turn over bitcoin as assets (obviously they can just take a thumb drive with your keys on it), if you're sued and/or a judgement is levied against you?
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Thursday 9th June 2016 07:36 GMT Dan 55
Does swiping just one of your cards card magically empty all your bank accounts wherever they are in the US? All your accounts within that state? All your accounts at the bank who gave you that card? Or just that account for that card?
Probably best not to carry all your cards with you in Oook-lahoma.
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Thursday 9th June 2016 08:39 GMT fajensen
Who Knows?
One does suspect that, since one explicitly has to use a personal credit card for the ESTA application, that "they" need that card to get the applicants "handle" in SWIFT (or whatever) and from there "they" can work out all the accounts registered in your name and probably associated accounts (all accounts you transferred to/from).
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Wednesday 8th June 2016 20:18 GMT Mark 85
Basically, it was a knee-jerk reaction to the declared "War on Drugs". Gave the police a excuse to seize and repurpose ill-gotten goods. Might be fine if they busted a drug dealer and used his car and money for some good. But, like anything, it quickly became abused and used by police departments as a revenue stream.
I really wish politicians would stop and think before they just toss laws on the books. But then, that requires them to think, use logic, and other things like ethics that are unknown to most of them.
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Thursday 9th June 2016 06:21 GMT AustinTX
@Alan Brown "People have also been convicted of DUI after being stopped walking along the footpath with car keys in their possession because they MIGHT use them to drive a car."
This is absolutely true. I was in a jury selection panel for exactly this. It's rolled under "Public Intoxication". A cop arrested a man who was walking down the sidewalk because *a witness* expressed the concern that this man would get in his car and drive drunk. The cop was his own "witness". It sounded like the man had simply been a tad surly when he was approached by Deputy Dawg. He had been drinking, but wasn't slobbering wasted. The man was literally being tried for a crime he hadn't committed. But could have. Just hope a cop doesn't pick YOU on the street for one of his fantasy scenarios.
I wasn't chosen for trial, probably because I asked too many questions.
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Wednesday 8th June 2016 20:46 GMT A Non e-mouse
Jon Oliver had an excellent item on this a while ago.
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Wednesday 8th June 2016 22:53 GMT John Brown (no body)
Jon Oliver had an excellent item on this a while ago.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks
That is just terrifying. It has all the hallmarks of a corrupt banana republic and just make me even more determined to never, ever visit the USA. It's effectively turning beat cops into Judge Dredd. Judge, jury and executioner..
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Thursday 9th June 2016 09:25 GMT Anonymous Coward
It has all the hallmarks of a corrupt banana republic
I think banana republics are usually more open about how they operate, they rarely pretend to be democracies and leaders of the free world and all that nonsense we keep hearing every time they want something.
and just make me even more determined to never, ever visit the USA.
Ah, the future of illegal rendition: the only way to keep the US tourist industry afloat..
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Thursday 9th June 2016 17:31 GMT Triggerfish
It's actually sort of refreshing as long as it's peaceful (it gets very dark if not), you know who is fucking who over. I always figured that most of these corrupt countries are usually youngish unstable governments, our ones like we have in the first world have just become more subtle about screwing us, and institutionalised it by bringing in laws, having old boys networks, tax havens etc. Basically banana republic governments are just amateurs when it comes to screwing the pennies out of the populace.
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Wednesday 8th June 2016 20:48 GMT Flocke Kroes
"I know that a lot of people are just going to focus on the seizing money. That's a very small thing that's happening now."
Perhaps Highway Patrol Lt John Vincent would like to tell us about some of the other things that are happening now. Is taking a car a very small thing or a small thing. How about a house? is that medium sized yet?
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Thursday 9th June 2016 10:07 GMT ShadowDragon8685
Re: It's the price of freedom!!
> Yes, merkins talk good freedom but very few seem to work out what it means and how to do it.
And what, exactly, are "vigilant" citizens supposed to do when confronted with corrupt police officers crying "Civil Asset Forfeiture!" to rob them?
Is that the point where an otherwise law-abiding citizen is supposed to pull out a gun and kill the police officer in question, and then run to the nearest Pay'n'spray to recolor their car, thus legally obliging every police officer from coast to coast to suffer a highly specific brain annyeurism which obliges them to forget about it?
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Friday 10th June 2016 08:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: It's the price of freedom!!
then run to the nearest Pay'n'spray to recolor their car
Ah, that may explain the popularity of plasti-dipping or foil laminating cars over there.
Whatever you do, someone figures out a way to make a buck off it..
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Thursday 9th June 2016 11:08 GMT phuzz
Re: Guilty until...?
From the police spokeman's own words:
"We're gonna look for different factors in the way that you're acting," he said. "We're gonna look for if there's a difference in your story; if there's some way that we can prove that you're falsifying information to us about your business."
Not "the way that they're acting", but "the way that you're acting". And this is how they talk to the media.
It seems like the assumption of guilt is completely ingrained.
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Thursday 9th June 2016 11:34 GMT Christoph
Re: Guilty until...?
Ah, but they can only search your car if they have reasonable suspicion. Such as a drug dog alerting on the car.
When this is studied, it's found that drug dogs give a *lot* of false alerts.
But of course that's in a controlled study. It doesn't include cases where the driver is obviously suspicious due to being Uppity, or Driving While Black, and the police accidentally give the dog the covert signal which it has accidentally been trained to respond to by giving a false alert. Accidentally like.
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Wednesday 8th June 2016 21:41 GMT Nunyabiznes
Constitution
"If I had to err on the side of one side versus the other, I would err on the side of the Constitution," Loveless said. "And I think that's what we need to do." said OK Senator.
I contend that basing a decision on the Constitution instead of kneejerk emotional reaction is not an error.
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Wednesday 8th June 2016 22:07 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Excellent
Between 2001 and 2014, the US government confiscated $29bn using the laws
That's half the money that has been promised to Israel for the next ten years 'coz they are sooo hurting from that bad, bad Iran deal. People are asking whether someone has money diarrhea. Well, looks like "direct taxation" can bring in the goods! Sorted!!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
